If you're overwhelmed with all the resale rights ebooks accumulating on your PC, or if you don't know HOW to start reselling those ebooks, then today's Q & A might be just what you need.
If you have any questions about this — or anything else — leave a coment using the form below. Don't forget, you can include your URL so you also get a free link back to your site!
Here's a question I received this week…
Q. I have tons of ebooks on my computer. On a separate area to keep track of all of them. My problem is: How do you manage all these zip files within the zip files!! When you put them on a website, you have to host the picture, type your description and manage all these files on the website as well as your PC!! I end up with so many folders that it turns into confusion central! How on earth do you keep all of this organized?
A. I'm not 100% sure from your question if your difficulty is with keeping track of all the ebooks files you've downloaded on your PC or whether it has to do with handling ZIP files or whether it has to do with getting these files uploaded to your website.
I'm going to assume it's a bit of all three.
Firstly, keeping track of all those downloads on your PC…
I wrote a message to Ebook Times subscribers a few months ago that touched on this subject. There was a free marketing giveaway going on with a lot of stuff available to download. Here's an extract from that message:
—QUOTE—
The first thing I would say is, don't download everything you come across just because you CAN.
It's important to remain focused in your business. It's very difficult at times, with all the distraction online, but it's very important.
One way to stay focused is in terms of the ebooks, software etc. that you download.
If you have no intention of selling products on Ebay, then there's no point in downloading an ebook on the subject.
Similarly, if you're thinking about downloading an ebook on, say, building a list, think before you click. Haven't you ALREADY downloaded 17 ebooks about building a list — and never even looked at them… Don't do it! Don't click the download link, you don't need it.
The only exception in the two cases above would be if the product came with resale rights or private label rights – if you're into that type of thing.
But, again, there's no need to download every resale rights product you see. Ask yourself if you're going to put it to use. If you're inclining towards 'no' then move on. There's plenty more where that came from. Plenty which are better or more relevant to your business.
We're being bombarded with more and more free products to download so it's important to remain in control by developing a filtering system. If not, we risk spending countless hours just downloading with little time left to actually DO anything.
Even by staying focused, there will still be no shortage of stuff that you'll want to download so it's important to develop an effecient way of storing it all on your PC.
For a long time I had the habit of calling folders things like "new-stuff-from-free-viral-giveaway-site" and then downloading everything in there. Pretty soon all I had was heaps of stuff in heaps of folders and no idea what's what.
A far more effecient system (in my opinion) is to store your downloads based on theme or topic. So, you create, for example, a "Downloads" folder in your "My Documents" folder and, inside that "Downloads" folder you create a number of sub-folders each covering a topic.
So, you might have a folder called "ezine publishing" and a folder called "copy writing" and a folder called "traffic" and so on. Now, when you download an ebook that deals with the topic, you place it in the corresponding folder.
That way, when it comes to the moment that you want to work on that area of your business, you'll be able to go directly to that folder and have a wealth of information and resources already sitting in one place.
Also, if a product includes resale rights, then here's a simple trick to make that fact stand out… place something like this at the start of the ZIP filename: "_RR_"
So, for example, let's say you download a product plus sales website and the ZIP file is called: productname.zip Change this to read: _RR_productname.zip
The underscore at the start will make sure that all these products are listed together at the top.
You can do the same thing for other traits, such as "_PLR_" for Private Label Rights and so on.
Another good idea, if you BUY ebooks from time to time, is to put a "bought" folder inside your topic folders.
That way you'll see that you've actually spent money on something related to this topic, so let's see if you can get a return on your investment. I can't remember buying it but, if I bought it, it must be because I though it was worth it at the time. Let's check it out.
It's also important that you delete the junk. If you've just wasted 10 minutes on something that turns out to be a bit of a dud, then get rid of it. Don't leave it on your PC ready to waste another 10 minutes of your time again in the future. Just say "Go away useless junk!" and hit the Delete button.
—END QUOTE—
One tool that you might find useful is Ebook Librarian. It will help you categorize and keep track of all your ebooks. You can download it here:
http://www.bizzydays.com/free/ebooklibsetup.zip
Now, when it comes to dealing with resale rights products in ZIP files, it's not as complicated as it might first appear.
Firstly, I'm going to assume you're working with WinZip to zip and unzip your files. If you don't already have it, you can download the free trial version here:
http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm
Now, here's an sample file you can download so that we can study a precise situation. It's "The Gold Collection Software Package" and it includes resale and give-away rights. Click here to download it:
http://www.ebooktimes.net/alt-tr-downloads/SGC-package.zip
When it's finished downloading, go to the folder you just saved it to. Right-click SGC-package.zip. On the menu, select "WinZip" and on the sub-menu select "Extract to folder C:\….." This will extract the contents of the ZIP file to a new folder with the same name (in this case, SGC-package).
Double-click into the new folder. You'll see it contains the main products — the software tools themselves — as well as a 'readme' text file. It also contains a ZIP file called mini-sites.
Now, the first thing you'll want to do with any set of files like this is check out the main product or, in this case, products. Whether you're interested in it for your own use or whether you just want to determine if it's good enough quality to resell, it's best to do it right away and be done with it.
If it's up to scratch, fine. If not, back out, delete the zip file and the newly-created folder and move on.
If you decide you want to resell (or give away) the product, you'll need the accompanying website.
Right-click on the "mini-sites" ZIP file and, like above, select "WinZip" and on the sub-menu select "Extract to folder C:\….." Now you have a new folder called "mini-sites". In this case it contains a page to resell the products and a page to give the products away. The images that accompany the pages are in the same folder as the pages themselves. (That means that, when you upload them to your website, the images need to be uploaded to the same folder as the pages in order to display properly.)
Now, using your web editing software, you open and edit whatever sales page and/or download page that is included. In most cases, adding your own contact details and payment link are the basic areas you need to edit.
—SIDENOTE—
For a tutorial on setting up payment and delivery of your ebooks, click here
For information on setting up your ebooks for download on your website, click here.
– END SIDENOTE—
If a download page isn't included, here's a quick way to create one: open the sales page in your web-editing software and then save to it the same folder under a new name (something less obvious that download-page.htm). Now, delete all the content on the page and replace it with your 'thank you page' information and download link. Here's a generic thank you page you can use as a model:
http://www.ebooktimes.com/generic-thanks.htm
Now, once you're finished editing the pages, you just need to upload them, together with the original zip file, to your website. You'll need FTP software to do this. If you're not familiar with
FTP, this ebook might help:
http://www.bizzydays.com/free/usingftp.zip
The easiest way to keep control of all the different products you upload to your site for resale, is to create a new folder for each one. You can do this using your FTP software. Give the folder a name related to the product. Now, upload the pages and the images to this folder. (If the images are in a subfolder relative to the pages, just upload the subfolder as it is).
Your new sales page will now reside at: http://www.your-site-name/subfolder-name or something to that effect.
If you want the sales page to be picked up by the search engines, put a link to it from somewhere on your website that's already being indexed. After that, promote it as best you can.
Back on your PC, there's a final step you could take that might help keep more order.
Create a folder called, for example, "Products I Resell". Make a copy of the original ZIP file and place it in here. This will keep everything together and easy to find should you need it.
Okay, I think that about covers it. Like I said, if you have a questions, please leave a comment below.
All the best,
Michael
